My story

I’m an artist, designer and explorer who’s been lucky enough to meet and fall in love with a multitude of creative tools and disciplines along the way.

Paints, pencils, pens, brushes are my favourite… I’ve been drawing all my life, even when I was quite unaware of it: each time I learnt something, each time I discovered a new perspective, scattered dots connected into a new, often unexpected shape, opened my eyes to something that just yesterday was to me completely invisible…

I started from a small and humble dot on a map – a place called Kursk in Southwestern Russia. In the whole of its existence, Kursk popped up on the world radar twice: once for the famous tank battle and then again when the submarine with the same name sank in the early 2000s. There wasn’t much before and hasn’t been much since.

But this place and a little later Moscow were clearly inspiring enough for me to create works of art such as this:

and this:

Then my little dot moved some 2000 km to the west; it was now becoming a line with a direction! England became my adoptive parent for years to come and my brain re-programmed itself to dream and create in English. I studied this new world carefully, getting to know its facets intimately and for a while, it seemed the line had come to rest.

Then the rest was interrupted, the hand was raised and a sharp line to the South, to the island of Malta was drawn. It was starting to look like a side of a triangle was being created. Along with it came some very unexpected discoveries. Like learning to code, which meant I could now make things happen right on my screen, build new worlds and realities, experiment, learn. Eventually this discovery led me to study Artificial Intelligence, one of the few tools that helps us understand ourselves and the world around us in a constructive way, by building.

Going back to the continent some time later – Belgium via Germany – my triangle changed into something resembling a spiral. I re-discovered the long forgotten paints, brushes and crayons and realised that all along they had been my true friends and companions.

And so I keep drawing. I still have no idea which shape I am making, or if there will ever be a shape. Maybe it’ll present itself in a way beyond our recognition and will be seen at best as “a squiggle”. But my story continues – dots leave footprints and become lines and lines become shapes, always moving, always turning, always creating.

Hello, I’m Yana and this is my story

I’m an artist and explorer who’s been lucky enough to meet and fall in love with a multitude of creative tools and disciplines along the way… read more